


Who wants to be a simple idiot wizard anyway?

by SairenHaria



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, That's a lie, nothing like canon memory issues, or guys who know him better than anyone involved realizes, taako does not like observant children, taako has honesty issues, the problem is he likes them too much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-20
Updated: 2017-09-20
Packaged: 2019-01-01 02:52:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12147057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SairenHaria/pseuds/SairenHaria
Summary: "We've got this. You just have to trust me."On the Rockport Limited, Taako makes a decision over a century old and brand new all at once.





	Who wants to be a simple idiot wizard anyway?

No one takes an idiot seriously.

Well, no. No one takes a greedy, pain in the ass idiot seriously. Idiots like Magnus could be taken seriously because he was so earnest and believed in justice. And Merle was more social ineptitude and a lackdaisy attitude that was more choice than intelligence.

But an idiot who can't figure out how to use a gachapon? Who casts inconvenient charms? Who does weird and random acts for shits and giggles? Who was so incompetent at magic, he'd randomly transmute objects? The kind of idiocy that made people wonder how he'd survive this long instead of trying to understand him.

A simple idiot wizard. Alive more from luck than anything else.

No one else needed to know more than that. So what if he knew how to effectively win a fight? So what if the only time he really did inconvenient things were when they didn't matter, Tom Bodett charming aside. Dramatic, annoying, selfish, charming in an amusing sort of way, but not someone to take seriously.

Certainly not someone to break glass and fight giant ogres for.

And yet Magnus did.

(He doesn't question why there's a deep ache in his heart at the thought.)

Definitely not someone whose encouraged, to not sell himself short.

Yet the Director does.

(He doesn't think about why that warms his heart.)

No one needs to think he's making them underestimate him for his own goals. Taako hands Angus his book because he's an idiot who thinks the kid is all right and not because he honestly respects the powerplay.

Because he's a simple idiot wizard and nothing else.

Angus keeps pushing for them to investigate, to think, to figure things out. He hasn't figured it out, but he seems unsurprised when they come up with more leads. Taako is fairly good at picking up when he's being led, and he certainly feels like there's a carrot dangling in front of him by the little twerp.

But forty people. An entire village. Merle's family. People dead and more people would die if they didn't get that relic and a selfish idiot wouldn't care, but he does.

He cares just enough that when everyone is grasping at clues, trying to put it together, and Merle says its the engineer and Angus is _looking at him like that_ -

He speaks up. Jokes about lucidity. Plays off like the intelligence is just a moment. Just a fluke. Nothing important. Like he's nothing more than a vacuum between his ears ninety-nine percent of the time, thinking only of fame and vanity.

He let's himself think, actually put the pieces together, do what Angus had wanted them to do from the start, and they have the answer. Thank Pan, because now they know what's going on, which meant they were onto action. Action was good because no one thought about what he was doing in a fight so long as he didn't hit one of them. He could be an idiot, he could be vain, arrogant, mock Jenkins as he deserved, and continue to be an idiot wizard who survived on luck.

Certainly not someone who'd pick up riches while everyone's back is turned.

All they had to do was to stop the train and he was just an idiot and hopefully no one on this train would even remember them. Especially that kid who still _keeps looking at them_ -

Graham the Juicy Wizard can't stop the train. 

They can't stop the train.

They're barreling towards Neverwinter with no way to possibly stop. 

More deaths. So many more deaths. Neverwinter is so much more densely populated than Phandalin. Even if not as many would die as an entire village, it would still be so many more lives, maybe even more than forty. Including their own.

He sees Magnus and Merle desperately trying to figure something out. Sees the fear in Agnus' eyes, looking between the three of them. He looks at the wand in his hand.

He played an idiot. But he wasn't an idiot. His confidence had been shaken in his magic, he still doesn't know what he did wrong, but that was because he was good enough to be complex. So complex he couldn't say when he went wrong. Two plus two plus two is easy to see when a number is wrong, but when it's two plus eighty-five times the square route of a hundred and forty-eight plus the mass of an orange, it was so much harder to know how he turned a berry into nightshade. Probably. He had talent. He had skill. He had ability.

Ability that could save the lives in Neverwinter. That could save everyone on this train. The little boy with his keen eyes and two guys who he cares about despite himself. Two guys whose deaths he didn't want to ponder.

Ability to get a dangerous relic where it wouldn't hurt anyone else again.

And the price was the comfort of never being truly seen.

It's surprising how quickly he comes to his decision.

"We've got this. You just have to trust me."

And he was already thinking, trying to think of the work around, if they refused to trust him, how can he force them to listen? Magnus looked like he could barely take a stiff breeze at this point, so if he could just get the drop on Merle and push him out of the train-

"Well. Okay. Done. Fuck it. You know what? I trust you, Taako." And there is a warm, sure hand on his shoulder, and his chest hurts. "I trust you."

"Oh," was it really that easy? "Excellent!" He said with his usual false bravado. 

Then he feels a hand on his hip and looks down at Merle. "That is as high as I can reach."

And there is a bubble of laughter between them as the grim atmosphere breaks and he can feel his confidence growing. This plan would work. This plan WILL work.

(Sometimes he thinks about that moment. That feeling. For a few brief seconds, he felt complete trust in them, and could see they trusted him. It was a moment that was old and familiar and it was like something he'd been through a dozen times over, but that was impossible. For all he could remember, he's never had that feeling, but before he could examine it further, his mind would wander to something else, minutes lost to static.)

The ground was that stiff breeze, unfortunately, but he just had to hope the juicy wizard could stabilize Magnus until Merle could tend to him.

He meets Merle's eyes as they keep barreling towards the archway. Hope and determination in their eyes and no words. A desperate last stand.

(He doesn't want to know why those eyes seem to understand him completely in that moment.)

It works. There's a riot of noise as the train crashes into the greenhouse, but not a single life is lost. Part of him almost wants to laugh in hysterics and instead he jokes about the luggage because he might not be an idiot, but he's still a selfish prick. He could own his truth.

Really, for all the looks Angus kept giving them, he was lucky to get even a piece of that silverware back. And he likes to think having to help drag Magnus to the clinic was worth the self appointed award.

(He doesn't like how there's so many grim things he doesn't want to think about because they feel familiar.)

After that, he sees new looks from Merle and Magnus. As they share the tale with the Director, she doesn't look the least bit surprised as Magnus and Merle said it was his plan. She almost seems relieved.

(And for some reason that doesn't surprise him either and he couldn't even begin to guess why.)

Now when he played idiot, he saw the looks of amusement on the others' two faces. Not hiding their laughter from a fool, but the look of people in on the joke. Some part of him thinks he should be nervous.

Instead, it feels normal.

Well.

Who wants to be a simple idiot wizard anyway?


End file.
